Event Background

Canadians are increasingly encountering artificial intelligence (AI) systems in their professional and personal lives. AI applications include prediction and recommendation algorithms, chatbots, AI generated digital media, and agentic AI that can act without human oversight, leading to real-world consequences. 

In June 2026, the federal government announced their national AI strategy, “AI for All.” The strategy seeks to promote AI adoption in Canada, highlighting the potential opportunities of AI for economic growth, productivity, industrial capability, politics, the betterment of society, and the enhancement of everyday life for Canadians. The strategy also recognizes Canada’s low public trust in AI and low levels of AI training and literacy, suggesting that these factors underpin Canada’s currently low AI adoption. 

Join Evidence for Democracy for a dynamic panel discussion on public trust in AI, exploring the roles of the federal government in ensuring the trustworthiness of AI applications in Canada. This panel event brings together experts with a background in AI development, safety, education, digital media literacy, and technology policy to critically discuss:

• The role of AI literacy and the determinants of AI trustworthiness 
• Strategies to promote trustworthy AI systems and to build public trust

Join us virtually on Wednesday, September 23rd at 12pm EST to take part in this conversation!

Target Audience 

Academics, researchers, policymakers, parliamentarians, staffers, students, advocacy groups, and members of the public. 

When and Where?

Wednesday, Sep 23, 2026 from 12-1pm EST. Online via Zoom.

Objectives

Objectives will include:

• Present E4D’s findings on AI and public trust.
• Examine the roles of governance, literacy, technical reliability and public engagement.
• Challenge the idea that low trust is primarily a public AI literacy problem.
• Explore how AI risks and benefits are experienced by different communities.
• Identify concrete measures needed to make AI systems more trustworthy and accountable.

Panelists

Matthew Johnson

Matthew Johnson is the Director of Education for MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital and media literacy. He is the author of many of MediaSmarts’ lessons, parent materials and interactive resources, a lead on MediaSmarts’ Young Canadians in a Wireless World research project and the architect of MediaSmarts’ Use, Understand, Engage: Digital Literacy Framework for Canadian K-12 Schools. He has served on expert panels convened by the Canadian Pediatric Society, the Sexual Information and Education Council of Canada and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, among others.

Helen Hayes

Helen is a Senior Fellow at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, working as an academic, policy leader, and researcher at the intersection of digital technology, democracy, and public life. Completing her Ph.D. at McGill University (Communication Studies), Helen previously served as a Fellow at the Centre for Media Technology and Democracy at McGill University, where she co-founded the Gen(Z)AI youth assembly. 

She was named a 2026 recipient of both The Peak’s Emerging Leader Award and Forbes 30 Under 30 (Education) for her work to engage young people in digital policymaking for AI and social media, and for her teaching in both undergraduate and graduate programs at McGill University. She is also a Peabody Award Nominee for Executive Producing Left To Their Own Devices, a podcast about young peoples’ experiences with digital technologies.

Kean Birch 

Kean Birch is the Ontario Research Chair in Science Policy and Professor in the Department of Science, Technology & Society and the Graduate Program in Science & Technology Studies at York University, Canada. He was also Director of the Institute for Technoscience & Society at York University between 2022 and 2025.

Kean is interested in how ‘things’ – ranging from knowledge to digital data – are turned into assets; that is, into techno-economic objects whose value is often derived from the capitalization of future revenue streams. A key dimension to this assetization process is the search for ‘durable economic rents’, so he is also interested in diverse forms of rentiership, understood as a social process and practice.

In his recent research, KeanI has started to focus on the construction and production of digital assets and digital ledger technologies and their role in financial markets, especially in relation to tokenization and payment systems.

Although he now mainly focuses on digital, data, and AI technologies, in the past he’s conductedI’ve done research on biotechnology, biofuels, infrastructure, and low-carbon technologies.